The Software Reckoning: Why Smaller, Tailored Solutions Are the Future
For the last decade, the playbook was simple:
Buy the biggest software. Trust the brand. Scale will save you.
That story is breaking down.
Public software companies are getting hammered. Valuations are compressing. Growth expectations are being rewritten in real time. And underneath all of that market noise is a much simpler truth:
Big software solved for scale — not for you.
What the Market Is Really Telling Us
When companies like Salesforce, Shopify, and Workday miss expectations, it’s easy to chalk it up to “macro conditions.”
But talk to actual operators and you’ll hear something different:
Too many features no one uses
Rising subscription costs with diminishing returns
One-size-fits-all workflows forced onto very different businesses
Expensive implementations that never quite land
The issue isn’t that software is bad.
It’s that generic software is no longer good enough.
SMBs Don’t Need Platforms — They Need Precision
Most small and mid-sized businesses don’t need:
1,000 features
A 6-month implementation
A per-seat pricing model that explodes as you grow
They need:
A clean intake process
Automation around their bottlenecks
Dashboards that answer real questions (not vanity metrics)
Systems that adapt as the business evolves
In other words: tailored solutions.
The Quiet Shift That’s Already Happening
What the public markets are punishing, founders and operators are already fixing:
Replacing bloated tools with lightweight, purpose-built systems
Stitching together workflows that match how work actually happens
Using AI to automate decisions, not just document them
Building internal tools that would never exist in a mass-market product
This isn’t anti-software.
It’s post-platform thinking.
Why This Is the Future (and Why It’s Cheaper Than You Think)
The irony is that custom solutions used to be expensive.
Now they’re often cheaper than off-the-shelf software when you factor in:
Shelfware you don’t use
Manual workarounds
Headcount added just to manage tools
Opportunity cost of slow decisions
With modern automation, AI, and modular tooling, businesses can finally build systems that bend with them — not against them.
Where six50 Fits In
At six50, we don’t start with software.
We start with:
How your business actually makes money
Where time, cash, or visibility breaks down
What should be automated — and what shouldn’t
Sometimes that means using existing tools.
Sometimes it means replacing them.
Often, it means building something smaller, sharper, and far more effective.
Because the future isn’t one massive platform.
It’s many precise solutions, designed around real businesses.
And the market is finally catching up to that reality.